-Caveat Lector- From http://www.antiwar.com/rep/laughland11.html }}>Begin British Soldiers Die So That Blair Can Play Leader of Europe Do Our Boys Have To Be At The Frontline? by John Laughland Daily Express August 28, 2001 When Sapper Ian Collins lay dying in a university hospital in Macedonia in the small hours of Monday morning, having been hit on the head by a piece of concrete thrown at him by Macedonian youths, he may well have asked, "Why did they do this to me?" and "Why was I sent here in the first place?" Why indeed? Britain is always in the front line when it comes to sending Western troops to fight other people's wars. The present NATO deployment to Macedonia is overwhelmingly composed of British soldiers, yet they were sent there without a whiff of public debate. The government made no statement to the House of Commons, still less did it recall Parliament to seek approval. The prime minister did not even bother to interrupt his sun-bathing in the South of France. Our foreign policy is now rather like our policy on foot and mouth disease. We respond with massive and indiscriminate force whenever there is an outbreak of instability. Despatching British troops is now the routine answer wherever there is trouble � Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and now Macedonia. Our European partners are more circumspect. The Germans have been having a proper debate for months about whether it is right to send German troops to Macedonia. They probably won't do it. Tony Blair sends British troops abroad with gay abandon because of his obsessive desire to be both a "leader" in Europe and a "bridge" with America. He knows he cannot lead Europe economically � Britain has not yet committed the requisite economic suicide by abandoning its national currency � so the only remaining avenue for his personal ambition is the army. He seems to think it makes sense to send our boys to disarm rebels in Macedonia in 30 days, although we have been unable to disarm our own paramilitaries in Northern Ireland in 30 years. Like all of the British political class, Mr. Blair also unquestioningly regards being Number One ally of the United States as an overriding political priority. Having lost our own Empire, we seem to want to behave like the crack troops of the American empire instead. We have therefore now lost the capacity to question whether these foreign escapades are in our national interest. Political reactions yesterday to Ian Collins' death confirmed this mental block: from Kenneth Clarke to Menzies Campbell, opposition leaders simply said that British troops might now have to stay longer and do more shooting. It did not occur to anyone that we should never have gone there in the first place. Britain is first in line for foreign escapades because we are a soft touch. We have become so collectively lobotomised in this country that we now treat the despatch of British troops to foreign lands as the moral equivalent of sending the St. John's Ambulance Brigade to a village fete. This is highly dangerous. Sending troops into other people's countries is the cutting edge of power politics. It is the stuff of which wars are made. And Tony Blair has just put British troops into a place where they are very unwelcome indeed. The last time I was in Macedonia, in June, the anger felt by ordinary Macedonians against the West was palpable. A TV journalist acquaintance of mine was beaten unconscious; I was myself nearly attacked by a furious drunk. Ordinary Macedonians, like the youths who threw the brick which killed Sapper Collins, are incensed at what they see as the West's support for Albanian rebels who have killed scores of Macedonian soldiers, committed terrible acts or murder and torture, and driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes. Throughout June and July, there were so many signs that the Americans were secretly helping the Albanian rebels � just as they did in Kosovo � that it seemed they wanted a pretext with which to justify a NATO intervention. Macedonian anger therefore rose to fury during the weekend when NATO announced it would collect only 3,000 weapons � less than one weapon per NATO soldier and vastly less than the Albanians' arsenal. Because none of these official explanations of what is going on make any sense, Macedonians are convinced that NATO's real motive is a desire to make Macedonia into a protectorate like Bosnia and Kosovo. They point out that the Americans are building an oil pipeline across the Balkan peninsula which will eventually provide a significant proportion of the West's energy supplies. This pipeline will have to be protected militarily. But American public opinion will not permit any American soldiers' lives to be put at risk, so they get the British to fight their wars for them. Unless we in Britain realise that the British army is for defending this country and not for indulging in imperial escapades � particularly not in a part of the world, the Balkans, which has been a graveyard of empires for centuries � then poor young Ian Collins' name will be only the first on a very long list. 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